Who are Deaf people?
Should we be seen as a Deaf person because of our deafness?
Should we be seen as a Deaf person because we use different language to communicate daily?
This is the question many hearing people as well as Deaf people struggling to answer. Both hearing and Deaf people could not understand how Deaf people should live in Malaysia?
I asked many Deaf people throughout Malaysia whether they see themselves as having a hearing disability. Most of them answered yes. Why did they answer yes to such question? Is it because they can’t hear sound? I have a question for myself. How do they know that they do not have hearing ability when they actually never experience it for themselves?
I met many hearing people. I told them that I am Deaf. They responded me, “Oh I am sorry for your hearing loss.”. Initially I thought it was normal response I should have received and I should be identified as a person with hearing loss.
But wait. Did I actually lose my hearing ability? I did not come to this world with hearing ability, how could I experience the loss? Therefore, we do not need anyone to feel sorry or pity for us because we are not with hearing loss. We actually acquired deafness which led us towards a new life culture, which would be different from those people with normal hearing ability. The acquisition of deafness is good news, and it makes us differently from people here.
Alright, let me to take you to a situation where I hope you will be able to see us in different light.
Please situate yourself in a different town. Let say this town is named “Ambre”.
All the residents of the town are born with deafness. Please remember that these people acquire deafness, not hearing loss, because they never have hearing ability at their birth.
Everyone communicates with each other in their local sign language. They do all kinds of jobs we know today, like today, such as operator, doctor, lawyer, speaker, newscaster, pilot, film producer and many more. They are able to have full access in the town, i.e. they do not have communication barrier with everyone in the town when they are doing their errands, or doing government business. They would not miss announcement made in public places, trains or town hall. They are also able to place their order at drive-thru. They would be able to make emergency call when they are trapped in lifts. Everything was developed to suit their ability.
The only thing different thing is that we do not use speaker! Speaker will never occur in our mind because we would not know what it is for.
Seeing that they have normal life like you all today. So do you think the people of the Ambre town are Deaf people? If you think they are Deaf people, how can you be so assure that they are Deaf when they actually never know that hearing ability is required to survive the society?
If you think they are Persons with Disability, how can you be so assure that they are Persons with Disability when they actually have full access to everything in the town?
So if these people travel to another town, Beans, they find out that they could not have full access to information in Beans. They lost way. They could not communicate efficiently with these strangers in Beans, would you call them as Persons with Disability? Before you answer the question yourself, please put yourself in the same situation, i.e. when you fly to Russia where nobody can speak English, you were not able to communicate with them efficiently, would you consider yourself as a Person with Disability? There is no real answer for this question.
Let us back to reality now, the Deaf people said they do not have hearing ability simply because they do not meet the society norms where hearing and speaking are required to carry out all communications. If we can’t hear anything, people would expect us to wear hearing aids so that we can hear them. The people, include our own parents, would expect us to do anything in order to have hearing ability back, i.e. wearing hearing aids, go through cochlear implant surgery or speech therapy.
As I have illustrated about the people of Ambre, if we could have full access to everything in the society, then we should be seen as a linguistic and cultural Deaf person.
Unfortunately, many people were unable to see our linguistic and cultural identity in that way, hence, people here never bother to give us full access to everything in the society, i.e. we would not be able to know any announcement in public places, radio or in the train. That is why we are called as Persons with Disability, not because of our deafness but because of our inaccessibility. Whenever we asked for a BIM interpreting services, we received a lot of questions, such as “do you really need it?” and “who is gonna pay for the service?”. If we have Japanese or Korean who are not fluent in English, interpreting services will be provided without these questions.
So we are both linguistic and cultural Deaf person and Persons with Disability in this society. Both identities are different, as I have illustrated their difference just now.
What exactly is our Deaf culture?
Not everything we do in our daily life is part of Deaf culture.
Many people assume that communication using pen and paper is our Deaf culture. It is not.
The culture must be only experienced within Deaf community, not between Deaf community and hearing community. Therefore, any kind of communication with hearing people are not part of Deaf culture. It is just communication matter, just like how you communicate with Japanese who may know little English.
Sending text and video call are also not part of Deaf culture. Do you know why? Hearing people do the same thing. How come we call it our Deaf culture? The Deaf culture must be unique to us that only Deaf people do it.
The Deaf Culture is a set of learned behaviours of a group of people that share same four characteristics:
1) Language,
2) Values,
3) Rules of Behaviour, and
4) Traditions.
BIM is our part of Deaf culture because Deaf people communicates in the language daily. However, many hearing people always question about the genuine of sign languages. Those who wish to learn BIM will have endless questions on how these sign words, which I will term as sord, into existence.
BIM is a separate language, yet many hearing people and even deaf people, could not understand what a separate language mean. They often have this weird perspective, for example, they would ask this sord is based on Malay or English word and they would ask how this sord come into existence and so on. I have a question for all of you, will you actually ask same questions when you learn Japanese, Korean, Chinese or Indonesian?
We are supposed to learn any language with open heart and mind. We should allow us to immerse ourselves in language learning without so many weird questions. When you are learning Japanese language, you only need to understand how to pronounce the Japanese words. You never asked them how these words are meaningful. Unfortunately, it does not happen the same to BIM.
Let me make this easy for you to understand. When you learned the Japanese word “Arigato”, you will simply accept it. When you learn the BIM sord “thank you”, you will ask why we need to sign like that.
Let’s back to the second of characteristics, which is values. We have three important values which are BIM, socialisation and accessibility. We can only socialise with Deaf people who use same language to satisfy our social interaction need. Every of us has same experience in having inaccessibility to the society, we would not be able to access TV without subtitle, we would not be able to have full participation in any seminars without BIM interpreting services, we would not be able to communicate with people through phone except the people make texting possible.
Thirdly, there were certain rules of behaviour we learned through our social interaction, such as how to get attention from other Deaf peers, for example, tap on shoulder, flick a light switch, stomp on floor, and others which are acceptable by Deaf people.
The fourth is the tradition which is still in practice today. Each Deaf person should have their own unique sign name, based on their characteristics.
Deaf history and literatures are supposed to be our traditions in Malaysia. Unfortunately, not many Deaf people were not fully equipped with our history and literatures as I believe that many Deaf people in Malaysia are struggling with an understanding of their own identity due to their tension with the society.
That is our Deaf Culture. However, if you have further questions about Deaf culture, please make sure you communicate with right person as not every Deaf person know and understand Deaf culture and BIM fully. Please bear in mind that not every Deaf person know well about Deaf culture and BIM.
Drafted for a talk on 15 September 2019
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